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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

ISRAEL: Safest place in Gaza - Greek Orthodox community in Gaza shelters Muslims fleeing war

About 1,000
Palestinian Muslims fleeing Israeli shells devastating their Gaza
neighborhood have found shelter in a building they otherwise would
rarely if ever enter, the city's 12th-century Greek Orthodox Church. St. Porphyrius monastery is the heart of the small Greek Orthodox
community in Gaza. The church dates to the Crusades in the 12th century.
Since Sunday, more than 700 evacuees, all of them Muslims, have crowded
into the courtyard for what they hoped was refuge.

“I was just saying to my friend, ‘Relax, this is the safest place in
Gaza,’ when the first rockets hit,” said Majid al-Jamal, 22, who works
in a body shop and was struck on the head by a piece of flying brick
Monday night.

That is when four Israeli missiles struck the
tombs in the small church cemetery. Shrapnel peppered the school next
door. Jamal said militants fired rockets, from the cemetery or nearby.

“A
child was born, right here, right after the airstrike,” said Archbishop
Alexios, leader of the church. “I think the fear pushed the baby out.”

Israel says mosques, schools and hospitals are being used to fire rockets or cache weapons. Prime Minister Benjamin Netantayu said Hamas is “targeting our civilians and hiding behind its civilians. That’s a double war crime.”

Only about 1,400 Christians -
Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants - live among the 1.8 million
Muslims, meaning they make up 0.08 percent of the population in the
crowded Gaza Strip dominated by Hamas, an Islamist group.

When the then Pope Benedict
quoted a medieval scholar describing Islam as violent and irrational in
2006, unknown militants attacked five churches in Palestinian areas,
including Saint Porphyrius - even though it is Orthodox, not Catholic.